The Social Context of Occupational Disease: Asbestos and South Africa

Abstract

General issues of industrial health are raised in relation to the production of asbestos and asbestos-related diseases in South Africa. A historical analysis of these diseases and their control in Britain demonstrates some general problems of occupational diseases with long incubation periods and their implications for capital and labor. In order to understand the role of the research establishment, an attempt is made to situate the state in the conflict between capital and labor. The terms and weapons of this ideological arena are investigated. The South African situation is then discussed. Its evident weaknesses—the lack of statutory limits on exposure, capital's responsibility for monitoring exposure and health, the inefficiency of the state inspection, and the meagerness and racial disparities in compensation—are related to the weakness of organized labor. These weaknesses are linked to the movement of certain industrial processes, finally acknowledged as unsafe by most academic research, away from the developed countries. In these countries, the strength of labor and environmental organizations has caused a decline in capitalist productivity.